Status Quo
by Butterflygirl113
Summary: Late night pondering post-Legion.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: For the lack of two paragraphs in the first section, which I found horribly unsatisfying without knowing why for the longest time, this piece has been sitting on my computer for an absurd amount of time. It is possibly well over a year old (lost the creation date when moving computers. Bah). Sorry. Also, this ended up a bit slashy when it really wasn't intended to. Read it in whichever way makes you happy, slash or non-slash. :-) Enjoy!

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In a rare moment of total sobriety, Dave Lister leaned back against his bunk wall and absently chewed on a dreadlock. The clock flashed 3 AM, adding a dull red tint to the nighttime lighting. His face was twisted in confusion. It didn't make sense.

Not that he _thought _about stuff like this often, ya know, but when he finally did… it didn't make sense.

His eyes rested blankly on the opposite wall for a while, the effort to focus them going instead to trying to sort out the confusing thoughts swirling around in his brain. Somewhere in that morass he found himself vaguely missing his room back on Red Dwarf. Aside from being cramped and chronically short of supplies, Starbug was all grey and plastic and metal and grating. He really missed the window, if for no other reason than it gave him the illusion of not being totally closed off. As it was, the Spartan grey rectangles stared back at him.

His mind returned to the enigmatic hologram. Now there was the perfect example of someone who was closed off! What was his deal? Lister shook his head in bemusement, running a curry-stained hand over his forehead and into his hair. After a few seconds of resting there uselessly, he let it drop to his thigh.

He sighed.

_Rimmer._ The man didn't make a bit of sense. He had spent… how many years had it been…? All to 'imself, unable to touch anything or anyone, and now that he _could _touch… he didn't.

He didn't get it.

If it was Lister, he'd be so overwhelmed with the joy of finally being able to touch again that he'd be hangin' off every remaining crew member 24-7 until they got so annoyed with him they'd threaten to throw him out an airlock. Hugs, high-fives, playful, joking slaps on the back…. But not Rimmer.

Sure, he touched _things_ occasionally. Mugs for his tea, the lever to adjust his seat, proper books now that he could turn the pages…. But after that first moment in Legion's station, never people. Some times he didn't even touch the _things._ It was like he'd gotten so used to being intangible that he'd forgotten he actually _could._

Why did he act that way? Lister wondered. Wasn't he always lonely? Wasn't he always complaining that he couldn't touch back when he was only soft-light? Why did he barely act like things were any different now?

He sank farther into the cushion of his bed, his backside informing him that they had gone rather a bit flat in the 3 million plus years since they had been installed, and pondered more deeply.

If it was him, touching would reconnect him to the others around him. It would make him feel human again, alive. It would erase that horrible ache of loneliness that total isolation would bring. Why didn't Rimmer want that?

The image of the hologram's tight, scowling face came to mind.

He always had seemed lonely, hadn't he? He'd even told him so, the few times he'd allowed his up-tight Ionian reserves to slip and indulge in a bit of alcohol. No harm in that, Lister thought. Would do him good, a bit of that.

But he'd never been overly touch-y when he'd been alive, had he? In fact, the only time the two men had ever touched was when pushing each other out of the way to get through the door or trying to stop the other from destroying one of their things. He'd always been distant….

Delving into the psyche of the ship's resident smeghead was always dangerous going, Lister knew, especially since that trip to the psy-moon. Yet, devoid of entertainment and prone to embracing emotions, he found himself honestly trying to figure the other man out. He was so different from him, truly from another world. Why?

Maybe, he thought with a dawning of understanding, maybe Rimmer didn't want to touch and grow closer to others because he always _had _been alone. Maybe it was more comfortable for him not to, or maybe he was just afraid of trying to live another way.

Lister's heart hurt at the thought, sympathy pains for another human being inclining him toward kindness.

Smeggin' 'ell, it would be miserable to live that way. It must smeggin' suck.

He lay down on the pillow, twirling the now slightly moistened dreadlock around his fingers as he stared through the ceiling.

Maybe he stayed lonely 'cause he'd always been lonely.

Maybe….

Maybe a dead man didn't know how to feel alive.

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Rimmer sat in Starbug's cockpit, taking his turn monitoring the instruments and surrounding space. He poked lethargically at a button or two before withdrawing his hand uncomfortably and staring at the screen.

It felt strange to touch. Something about the contact was both deliciously inviting and made his skin crawl. He often told himself he was simply out of practice, that he would get used to it again eventually, but part of his mind still held back. Perhaps he didn't feel right being able to touch, to interact with his surroundings like a living person when he was so clearly dead.

He sighed.

Perhaps not _clearly_ dead. Not to Lister, at least. He always treated him like he was alive, even when he couldn't touch. There was even less of a barrier there now, at least of the discomfort-around-death sort. The other barriers still remained.

He absently ran a finger over the surface of the console, too distracted by his thoughts to realize what he was doing, as the smooth plastic surface comforted a primal part of him. It reminded him, when he wasn't thinking, of when he had been alive and been able to experience those sensations so normally. It was only when he was thinking that they seemed odd.

He came back to his senses and jerked his hand away, eyeing the console with distrust, before quickly scanning over the information to make sure all was still as it should be. It was, so he leaned back into his chair and stared at the empty stations around him. The chair screamed sensation at his newly hard-light body, but he did his best to ignore it, too drained to sit up on his own.

His mind wandered, suspicions taking a different trail, and leading back to Lister. He was too tired to muster spite; only bemusement and the quiet of the late-night emptiness filled his mind.

The smegging git was always looking at him with some strange sort of expectation. Rimmer didn't know what it was he expected, but he did know that look, and he did know the pain of failing to live up to it. What bothered him most, though, was not being able to figure out what it was Lister expected from him. With his father it was always clear, and clearly impossible. With Lister…. Well, it usually was impossible, wasn't it? He always expected him to be someone he wasn't, someone friendly and optimistic and good. It wouldn't surprise him if whatever the smeg it was he expected from him now was also impossible.

Somewhere in his pondering he had let his hands fall back to the subversive console station, and they took this moment to remind him of the tangible world he was once more a part of. A strange sickness twisted his stomach at the newness that shouldn't be new, too used to isolation to so readily accept being able to be a part of the world again.

Not that he ever had been, Rimmer thought bitterly. While he'd never wish to go back to the way he was when he couldn't touch anything, loathing the utter, literal impotence he had been forced to endure day in and day out, in some ways it felt comfortable. He wouldn't be expected to interact with others in a close, friendly sense since he couldn't touch them, wouldn't feel like so much of a failure because it wasn't his fault. Being dead meant that his physical form lined up with his emotional one, that his isolation was now literally clear. It was safer not to be touched, not to have to worry about being able to touch. When no one could touch you, they couldn't hurt you.

Yet Lister had tried. He'd slipped once, right after Legion had given him his hard-light form, and touched Lister because he was the closest thing to him to prove it really worked, but Lister did the same. He'd touched him, gently, neutrally, no hint of intended malice or harm in the action and perhaps, if he deluded himself, some small bit of camaraderie. The memory made him shiver, or perhaps shudder, he didn't know. But it was so different from what he was used to, even before he had died. It frightened him, confused him, so as he usually did with things like that, he did his best to avoid it.

But sometimes he'd turn and Lister would be looking at him with that sort of expectation, that bit of wondering confusion that echoed a day wandering Legion's corridors, and he'd turn away, unsure of what to do. Unsure of what any of it meant.

He stared at the console he'd been unable to touch for years, brooding, and caressed the surface with a perverse delight. Sick and enamored, that's how touch made him feel, yet he knew without a doubt that it would be a million times safer to touch objects, things without expectations and wondering, hopeful looks, than it would be to allow himself to come into contact with people.

The system beeped to signal the end of another, normal maintenance scan and he forcefully pushed the button to acknowledge he'd seen it. A dark, ironic, ghosting smile played about his lips. The status quo- who was he to change it?


End file.
